This Week in Rock History: The Rolling Stones Record ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’

This week in rock history, Abbie Hoffman and Grace Slick nearly dosed Richard Nixon, the Rolling Stones cut one of their greatest songs, the Ramones released their debut LP, Queen honored Freddie Mercury at Wembley Stadium and Aerosmith issued Get a Grip.

April 20th, 1968 ”“ The Rolling Stones Record “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”

It’s crazy to imagine now, but in early 1968 the Rolling Stones were beginning to seem passé. Their most recent LP, the psychedelic Her Satanic Majesties Request, was a misfire on most every level, and for a very short while it seemed like the group might fade away. The Stones were way too smart and ambitious, however, to let one disappointing album sink them. And just four months after the LP hit stores, they returned to the studio to begin cutting a track that would completely restore their reputation and begin the second great era of their career.

“The lyrics [for ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’] came from a red gray dawn at Redlands,” Keith Richards wrote in his memoir Life, referring to his estate. “Mick and I had been up all night, it was raining outside and there was the sound of these heavy stomping rubber boots near the window, belonging to my gardener, Jack Dyer, a real country man from Sussex. It woke Mick up. He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s Jack. That’s Jumping Jack.” The song was recorded on April 20th, 1968 and rushed into stores just four weeks later. It became a hit all over the world, and provided the perfect setup for their next album, Beggars Banquet ”” which came out later that year.

April 24th, 1970 ”” Grace Slick and Abbie Hoffman Nearly Dose President Nixon

In early 1970, Grace Slick was shocked when an invitation to appear at the White House arrived in her mailbox. At the time, Richard Nixon had been in the White House for just about a year and the Jefferson Airplane singer was one of the most famous hippies in the entire country. She got the invitation because Nixon’s daughter Tricia was throwing a party for her fellow Finch College alumnae, and Slick had attended the women’s finishing school a decade earlier. “Going against the counsel of the other Finchettes, she sent me an invitation,” Slick wrote in her memoir Somebody to Love? “When she asked me who my ‘escort’ would be, I quickly said, ‘Mr. Leonard Haufman.'” As in Abbie Hoffman.

When the big day came, Slick did everything she could to make the counterculture icon look as straight as possible. “I tried to flatten his hair ”” he had a big Afro and we didn’t want to look like a couple of screaming hippies,” she wrote. “But when I got through with him and he put on a suit and tie, he looked like a hit man for the Mafia.” They got in line at the White House gates, secreting a gigantic supply of powdered LSD. Their plan was to dose the tea at the event and take President Nixon on his first acid trip. “The idea that he might be stumbling through the White House a little later, talking to paintings, watching the walls melt, and thinking was turning into a bulldog, was irresistible,” she wrote. Unfortunately for the couple, they were detained by security and told that they couldn’t enter because Slick was on an FBI blacklist. After a brief back-and-forth ”” in which the guards relented and said she could come in, but without Hoffman ”” the pair left in a huff, having almost pulled off the dosing of the century.